Okay, so I’ve finally had a chance to write a blog about the Netherlands and our free weekend in Amsterdam. Everyone has already mentioned this, but I think the highlight of the Netherlands trip with the group was the mud-walking tour. But I’ll get to that later.
Once we left Bonn we drove up Friday to first visit a Noah’s Ark of sorts that was preserving a few breeds of livestock that for one reason or another had fallen out of favor with production operations. Although I am not sure of the practicalities of maintaining these breeds, it was nice to see farm animals as they used to live out in fields instead of concrete facilities. After our visit to the museum we drove up to an area near Pieterburen where our mud walking tour was to commence. I believe the purpose of the mud-walking tour was to experience a unique ecosystem that contained unique animals. I must say that once we got to the mud, there were not that many animals out there; mainly mussels of some sort and worms (although all we saw of them were their leftovers). I had a blast though. We spent several hours almost jogging through the mud to keep from sinking too deeply in the mud, and while it got quite tiring, it never stopped being fun. And my favorite part was when we were trying (once again) to keep up with our guide and all of the sudden we are knee deep in mud and stuck. And I mean really stuck. As in about to fall over, shoes being left behind kind of stuck. But we managed to help each other out and admire our new mud boots. Of course before anyone could get any good pictures we forded a small river I guess you could call it, and washed all the mud off. I am not sure of the purpose of crossing the river other than to mess with us, as we promptly crossed the same river two more times (and on the second leg the water was up to our waists). So much fun though. And the guide said that he was proud of us for making it all the way through. Go team.
For our free weekend my group chose to go to Amsterdam and it was quite a lot of fun. Of course there were the “coffee shops” there that everyone knows doesn’t serve coffee, and the ladies in the red light district, but there really is a lot more than that to the town. We took a walking tour of the town and our awesome Australian guide explained how tolerant Amsterdamers are of one another and how willing they are to stick their necks out for their fellow man, despite any differences they might have. And it is this tolerance that allows for the drugs and the prostitution to occur, because it benefits the economy and thus the town as a whole. Our hostel experience was interesting as none of us had stayed in a hostel before and weren’t quite sure what to expect. While we had requested a room all together (the four of us), we ended up split up, but that ended up working out all right because it gave me the opportunity to meet some really hilarious people that were fully enjoying what Amsterdam has to offer. There were some anxious times as our room got broken into at one point and one of the guys was pick-pocketed while we were all in the room, but nothing of ours was stolen thankfully so it wasn’t too bad for us at least.
I really enjoyed my time in the Netherlands and am very glad I was given the opportunity to visit. Despite my complete lack of Dutch language skills, we had a good time and met some great people.
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